On the Sublime

Longinus

To the best of our knowledge, the text of this
work is in the “Public Domain” in Australia.
HOWEVER, copyright law varies in other countries, and the work may
still be under copyright in the country from which you are accessing this website.
It is your responsibility to check the applicable copyright laws
in your country before downloading this work.

eBooks@Adelaide
The University of Adelaide Library
University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005

I

YOU will remember, my dear Postumius Terentianus, that when we examined together the treatise of
Caecilius on the Sublime, we found that it fell below the dignity of the whole subject, while it failed signally to
grasp the essential points, and conveyed to its readers but little of that practical help which it should be a writer’s
principal aim to give. In every systematic treatise two things are required. The first is a statement of the subject;
the other, which although second in order ranks higher in importance, is an indication of the methods by which we may
attain our end. Now Caecilius seeks to show the nature of the sublime by countless instances as though our ignorance
demanded it, but the consideration of the means whereby we may succeed in raising our own capacities to a certain pitch
of elevation he has, strangely enough, omitted as unnecessary. 2. However, it may be that the
man ought not so much to be blamed for his shortcomings as praised for his happy thought and his enthusiasm. But since
you have urged me, in my turn, to write a brief essay on the sublime for your special gratification, let us consider
whether the views I have formed contain anything which will be of use to public men. You will yourself, friend, in
accordance with your nature and with what is fitting, join me in appraising each detail with the utmost regard for
truth; for he answered well who, when asked in what qualities we resemble the Gods, declared that we do so in
benevolence and truth. 3. As I am writing to you, good friend, who are well versed in literary
studies, I feel almost absolved from the necessity of premising at any length that sublimity is a certain distinction
and excellence in expression, and that it is from no other source than this that the greatest poets and writers have
derived their eminence and gained an immortality of renown. 4. The effect of elevated language upon
an audience is not persuasion but transport. At every time and in every way imposing speech, with the spell it throws
over us, prevails over that which aims at persuasion and gratification. Our persuasions we can usually control, but the
influences of the sublime bring power and irresistible might to bear, and reign supreme over every hearer. Similarly,
we see skill in invention, and due order and arrangement of matter, emerging as the hard-won result not of one thing
nor of two, but of the whole texture of the composition, whereas Sublimity flashing forth at the right moment scatters
everything before it like a thunderbolt, and at once displays the power of the orator in all its plenitude. But enough;
for these reflexions, and others like them, you can, I know well, dear Terentianus, yourself suggest from your own
experience.

II

First of all, we must raise the question whether there is such a thing as an art of the sublime or lofty. Some hold
that those are entirely in error who would bring such matters under the precepts of art. A lofty tone, says one, is
innate, and does not come by teaching; nature is the only art that can compass it. Works of nature are, they think,
made worse and altogether feebler when wizened by the rules of art. 2. But I maintain that
this will be found to be otherwise if it be observed that, while nature as a rule is free and independent in matters of
passion and elevation, yet is she wont not to act at random and utterly without system. Further, nature is the original
and vital underlying principle in all cases, but system can define limits and fitting seasons, and can also contribute
the safest rules for use and practice. Moreover, the expression of the sublime is more exposed to danger when it goes
its own way without the guidance of knowledge, — when it is suffered to be unstable and unballasted, — when it is left
at the mercy of mere momentum and ignorant audacity. It is true that it often needs the spur, but it is also true that
it often needs the curb. 3. Demosthenes expresses the view, with regard to human life in general,
that good fortune is the greatest of blessings, while good counsel, which occupies the second place, is hardly inferior
in importance, since its absence contributes inevitably to the ruin of the former (Against
Aristocrates 113). This we may apply to diction, nature occupying the position of good fortune, art that of good
counsel. Most important of all, we must remember that the very fact that there are some elements of expression which
are in the hands of nature alone, can be learnt from no other source than art. If, I say, the critic of those who
desire to learn were to turn these matters over in his mind, he would no longer, it seems to me, regard the discussion
of the subject as superfluous or useless . . .

III

Quell they the oven’s far-flung splendour-glow!

Ha, let me but one hearth-abider mark —

One flame-wreath torrent-like I’ll whirl on high;

I’ll burn the roof, to cinders shrivel it! —

Nay, now my chant is not of noble strain.

(Aeschylus, tr. A. S. Way)

Such things are not tragic but pseudo-tragic — ‘flame-wreaths,’ and ‘belching to the sky,’ and Boreas represented as
a ‘flute-player,’ and all the rest of it. They are turbid in expression and confused in imagery rather than the product
of intensity, and each one of them, if examined in the light of day, sinks little by little from the terrible into the
contemptible. But since even in tragedy, which is in its very nature stately and prone to bombast, tasteless tumidity
is unpardonable, still less, I presume, will it harmonise with the narration of fact. 2. And
this is the ground on which the phrases of Gorgias of Leontini are ridiculed when he describes Xerxes as the ‘Zeus of
the Persians’ and vultures as ‘living tombs.’ So is it with some of the expressions of Callisthenes which are not
sublime but high-flown, and still more with those of Cleitarchus, for the man is frivolous and blows, as Sophocles has
it,

On pigmy hautboys: mouthpiece have they none.

(Sophocles, tr. A. S. Way)

Other examples will be found in Amphicrates and Hegesias and Matris, for often when these writers seem to themselves
to be inspired they are in no true frenzy but are simply trifling. 3. Altogether, tumidity
seems particularly hard to avoid. The explanation is that all who aim at elevation are so anxious to escape the
reproach of being weak and dry that they are carried, as by some strange law of nature, into the opposite extreme. They
put their trust in the maxim that ‘failure in a great attempt is at least a noble error’. 4. But evil are the swellings, both in the body and in diction, which are inflated and unreal, and
threaten us with the reverse of our aim; for nothing, say they, is drier than a man who has the dropsy. While tumidity
desires to transcend the limits of the sublime, the defect which is termed puerility is the direct antithesis of
elevation, for it is utterly low and mean and in real truth the most ignoble vice of style. What, then, is this
puerility? Clearly, a pedant’s thoughts, which begin in learned trifling and end in frigidity. Men slip into this kind
of error because, while they aim at the uncommon and elaborate and most of all at the attractive, they drift unawares
into the tawdry and affected. 5. A third, and closely allied, kind of defect in matters of
passion is that which Theodorus used to call parenthyrsus. By this is meant unseasonable and empty passion,
where no passion is required, or immoderate, where moderation is needed. For men are often carried away, as if by
intoxication, into displays of emotion which are not caused by the nature of the subject, but are purely personal and
wearisome. In consequence they seem to hearers who are in no wise affected to act in an ungainly way. And no wonder;
for they are beside themselves, while their hearers are not. But the question of the passions we reserve for separate
treatment.

IV

Of the second fault of which we have spoken — frigidity — Timaeus supplies many examples. Timaeus was a writer of
considerable general ability, who occasionally showed that he was not incapable of elevation of style. He was learned
and ingenious, but very prone to criticise the faults of others while blind to his own. Through his passion for
continually starting novel notions, he often fell into the merest childishness. 2. I will set
down one or two examples only of his manner, since the greater number have been already appropriated by Caecilius. In
the course of a eulogy on Alexander the Great, he describes him as ‘the man who gained possession of the whole of Asia
in fewer years than it took Isocrates to write his Panegyric urging war against the Persians.’ Strange indeed
is the comparison of the man of Macedon with the rhetorician. How plain it is, Timaeus, that the Lacedaemonians, thus
judged, were far inferior to Isocrates in prowess, for they spent thirty years in the conquest of Messene, whereas he
composed his Panegyric in ten. 3. Consider again the way in which he speaks of the
Athenians who were captured in Sicily. ‘They were punished because they had acted impiously towards Hermes and
mutilated his images, and the infliction of punishment was chiefly due to Hermocrates the son of Hermon, who was
descended, in the paternal line, from the outraged god.‘I am surprised, beloved Terentianus, that he does not write
with regard to the despot Dionysius that ‘Dion and Heracleides deprived him of his sovereignty because he had acted
impiously towards Zeus and Heracles.’ 4. But why speak of Timaeus when even those heroes of
literature, Xenophon and Plato, though trained in the school of Socrates, nevertheless sometimes forget themselves for
the sake of such paltry pleasantries? Xenophon writes in the Policy of the Lacedaemonians: ‘You would find it
harder to hear their voice than that of busts of marble, harder to deflect their gaze than that of statues of bronze;
you would deem them more modest than the very maidens in their eyes’ (de Rep. Laced. III.
5.)

It was worthy of an Amphicrates and not of a Xenophon to call the pupils of our eyes ‘modest maidens.’ Good heavens,
how strange it is that the pupils of the whole company should be believed to be modest notwithstanding the common
saying that the shamelessness of individuals is indicated by nothing so much as the eyes! ‘Thou sot? that hast the eyes
of a dog,’ as Homer has it (Iliad 1.225). Timaeus, however, has not left even this piece of
frigidity to Xenophon, but clutches it as though it were hid treasure. At all events, after saying of Agathocles that
he abducted his cousin, who had been given in marriage to another man, from the midst of the nuptial rites, he asks,
‘Who could have done this had he not had wantons, in place of maidens, in his eyes?’ 6. Yes,
and Plato (usually so divine) when he means simply tablets says, ‘They shall write and preserve cypress
memorials in the temples (Laws 5. 741c)

And again, ‘As touching walls, Megillus, I should hold with Sparta that they be suffered to lie asleep in the earth
and not summoned to arise’ (Laws 6. 778d). The expression of Herodotus to the effect that
beautiful women are ‘eye-smarts’ is not much better (Histories 5. 18). This, however, may be
condoned in some degree since those who use this particular phrase in his narrative are barbarians and in their cups,
but not even in the mouths of such characters is it well that an author should suffer, in the judgment of posterity,
from an unseemly exhibition of triviality.

V

All these ugly and parasitical growths arise in literature from a single cause, that pursuit of novelty in the
expression of ideas which may be regarded as the fashionable craze of the day. Our defects usually spring, for the most
part, from the same sources as our good points. Hence, while beauties of expression and touches of sublimity, and
charming elegancies withal, are favourable to effective composition, yet these very things are the elements and
foundation, not only of success, but also of the contrary. Something of the kind is true also of variations and
hyperboles and the use of the plural number, and we shall show subsequently the dangers to which these seem severally
to be exposed. It is necessary now to seek and to suggest means by which we may avoid the defects which attend the
steps of the sublime.

VI

The best means would be, friend, to gain, first of all, clear knowledge and appreciation of the true sublime. The
enterprise is, however, an arduous one. For the judgment of style is the last and crowning fruit of long experience.
None the less, if I must speak in the way of precept, it is not impossible perhaps to acquire discrimination in these
matters by attention to some such hints as those which follow.

VII

YOU must know, my dear friend, that it is with the sublime as in the common life of man. In life
nothing can be considered great which it is held great to despise. For instance, riches, honours, distinctions,
sovereignties, and all other things which possess in abundance the external trappings of the stage, will not seem, to a
man of sense, to be supreme blessings, since the very contempt of them is reckoned good in no small degree, and in any
case those who could have them, but are high-souled enough to disdain them, are more admired than those who have them.
So also in the case of sublimity in poems and prose writings, we must consider whether some supposed examples have not
simply the appearance of elevation with many idle accretions, so that when analysed they are found to be mere vanity —
objects which a noble nature will rather despise than admire. 2. For, as if instinctively,
our soul is uplifted by the true sublime; it takes a proud flight, and is filled with joy and vaunting, as though it
had itself produced what it has heard.

3.When, therefore, a thing is heard repeatedly by a man of intelligence, who is well versed in
literature, and its effect is not to dispose the soul to high thoughts, and it does not leave in the mind more food for
reflexion than the words seem to convey, but falls, if examined carefully through and through, into disesteem, it
cannot rank as true sublimity because it does not survive a first hearing. For that is really great which bears a
repeated examination, and which it is difficult or rather impossible to withstand, and the memory of which is strong
and hard to efface. 4. In general, consider those examples of sublimity, to be fine and
genuine which please all and always. For when men of different pursuits, lives, ambitions, ages, languages, hold
identical views on one and the same subject, then that verdict which results, so to speak, from a concert of discordant
elements makes our faith in the object of admiration strong and unassailable.

VIII

There are, it may be said, five principal sources of elevated language. Beneath these five varieties there lies, as
though it were a common foundation, the gift of discourse, which is indispensable. First and most important is the
power of forming great conceptions, as we have elsewhere explained in our remarks on Xenophon. Secondly, there is
vehement and inspired passion. These two components of the sublime are for the most part innate. Those which remain are
partly the product of art. The due formation of figures deals with two sorts of figures, first those of thought and
secondly those of expression. Next there is noble diction, which in turn comprises choice of words, and use of
metaphors, and elaboration of language. The fifth cause of elevation — one which is the fitting conclusion of all that
have preceded it — is dignified and elevated composition. Come now, let us consider what is involved in each of these
varieties, with this one remark by way of preface, that Caecilius has omitted some of the five divisions, for example,
that of passion. 2. Surely he is quite mistaken if he does so on the ground that these two,
sublimity and passion, are a unity, and if it seems to him that they are by nature one and inseparable. For some
passions are found which are far removed from sublimity and are of a low order, such as pity, grief and fear; and on
the other hand there are many examples of the sublime which are independent of passion, such as the daring words of
Homer with regard to the Aloadae, to take one out of numberless instances,

Yea, Ossa in fury they strove to upheave on Olympus on high,

With forest-clad Pelion above, that thence they might step to the sky (Odyssey XI.
315-16.).

And so of the words which follow with still greater force:—

Ay, and the deed had they done. (Odyssey XI. 317.)

3. Among the orators, too, eulogies and ceremonial and occasional addresses contain on
every side examples of dignity and elevation, but are for the most part void of passion. This is the reason why
passionate speakers are the worst eulogists, and why, on the other hand, those who are apt in encomium are the least
passionate. 4. If, on the other hand, Caecilius thought that passion never contributes at
all to sublimity, and if it was for this reason that he did not deem it worthy of mention, he is altogether deluded. I
would affirm with confidence that there is no tone so lofty as that of genuine passion, in its right place, when it
bursts out in a wild gust of mad enthusiasm and as it were fills the speaker’s words with frenzy.

IX

Now the first of the conditions mentioned, namely elevation of mind, holds the foremost rank among them all. We
must, therefore, in this case also, although we have to do rather with an endowment than with an acquirement, nurture
our souls (as far as that is possible) to thoughts sublime, and make them always pregnant, so to say, with noble
inspiration. 2. In what way, you may ask, is this to be done? Elsewhere I have written as
follows: ‘Sublimity is the echo of a great soul.’ Hence also a bare idea, by itself and without a spoken word,
sometimes excites admiration just because of the greatness of soul implied. Thus the silence of Ajax in the Underworld
is great and more sublime than words (Odyssey XI. 543 ff.)3. First,
then, it is absolutely necessary to indicate the source of this elevation, namely, that the truly eloquent must be free
from low and ignoble thoughts. For it is not possible that men with mean and servile ideas and aims prevailing
throughout their lives should produce anything that is admirable and worthy of immortality. Great accents we expect to
fall from the lips of those whose thoughts are deep and grave. 4. Thus it is that stately
speech comes naturally to the proudest spirits. [You will remember the answer of] Alexander to Parmenio when he said
‘For my part I had been well content [quotation from Arrian].’ . . . . . . .

. . . . the distance from earth to heaven; and this might well be considered the measure of Homer no less
than of Strife. 5. How unlike to this the expression which is used of Sorrow by Hesiod, if
indeed the Shield is to be attributed to Hesiod:

Rheum from her nostrils was trickling.(Shield of Heracles 267)

The image he has suggested is not terrible but rather loathsome. Contrast the way in which Homer magnifies the
higher powers:

And far as a man with his eyes through the sea-line haze may discern,

On a cliff as he sitteth and gazeth away o’er the wine-dark deep,

So far at a bound do the loud-neighing steeds of the Deathless leap. (Iliad 5. 770)

He makes the vastness of the world the measure of their leap. The sublimity is so overpowering as naturally to
prompt the exclamation that if the divine steeds were to leap thus twice in succession they would pass beyond the
confines of the world. 6. How transcendent also are the images in the Battle of the Gods:—

And he sprang from his throne, and he cried aloud in the dread of his heart

Lest o’er him earth-shaker Poseidon should cleave the ground apart,

And revealed to Immortals and mortals should stand those awful abodes,

Those mansions ghastly and grim, abhorred of the very Gods. (Iliad 20. 61-65)

You see, my friend, how the earth is torn from its foundations, Tartarus itself is laid bare, the whole world is
upturned and parted asunder, and all things together — heaven and hell, things mortal and things immortal — share in
the conflict and the perils of that battle!

7. But although these things are awe-inspiring, yet from another point of view, if they be
not taken allegorically, they are altogether impious, and violate our sense of what is fitting. Homer seems to me, in
his legends of wounds suffered by the gods, and of their feuds, reprisals, tears, bonds, and all their manifold
passions, to have made, as far as lay within his power, gods of the men concerned in the Siege of Troy, and men of the
gods. But whereas we mortals have death as the destined haven of our ills if our lot is miserable, he portrays the gods
as immortal not only in nature but also in misfortune. 8. Much superior to the passages
respecting the Battle of the Gods are those which represent the divine nature as it really is — pure and great and
undefiled; for example, what is said of Poseidon in a passage fully treated by many before ourselves:—

Her far-stretching ridges, her forest-trees, quaked in dismay,

And her peaks, and the Trojans’ town, and the ships of Achaia’s array,

Beneath his immortal feet, as onward Poseidon strode.

Then over the surges he drave: leapt sporting before the God

Sea-beasts that uprose all round from the depths, for their king they knew,

And for rapture the sea was disparted, and onward the car-steeds flew. (Iliad 13. 18)

9. Similarly, the legislator of the Jews, no ordinary man, having formed and expressed a
worthy conception of the might of the Godhead, writes at the very beginning of his Laws, ‘God said’ — what? ‘Let there
be light, and there was light; let there be land, and there was land’. 10. Perhaps I shall not
seem tedious, friend, if I bring forward one passage more from Homer — this time with regard to the concerns of men —
in order to show that he is wont himself to enter into the sublime actions of his heroes. In his poem the battle of the
Greeks is suddenly veiled by mist and baffling night. Then Ajax, at his wits’ end, cries:

Zeus, Father, yet save thou Achaia’s sons from beneath the gloom,

And make clear day, and vouchsafe unto us with our eyes to see!

So it be but in light, destroy us!

(Iliad 17. 645).

That is the true attitude of an Ajax. He does not pray for life, for such a petition would have ill beseemed a hero.
But since in the hopeless darkness he can turn his valour to no noble end, he chafes at his slackness in the fray and
craves the boon of immediate light, resolved to find a death worthy of his bravery, even though Zeus should fight in
the ranks against him. 11. In truth, Homer in these cases shares the full inspiration of the
combat, and it is neither more nor less than true of the poet himself that

Mad rageth he as Arês the shaker of spears, or as mad flames leap

Wild-wasting from hill unto hill in the folds of a forest deep,

And the foam-froth fringeth his lips. (Iliad 15. 605-607)

He shows, however, in the Odyssey (and this further observation deserves attention on many grounds) that, when a
great genius is declining, the special token of old age is the love of marvellous tales.

12. It is clear from many indications that the Odyssey was his second subject. A special
proof is the fact that he introduces in that poem remnants of the adventures before Ilium as episodes, so to say, of
the Trojan War. And indeed, he there renders a tribute of mourning and lamentation to his heroes as though he were
carrying out a long-cherished purpose. In fact, the Odyssey is simply an epilogue to the Iliad:—

There lieth Ajax the warrior wight, Achilles is there,

There is Patroclus, whose words had weight as a God he were;

There lieth mine own dear son. (Odyssey 3. 109-111)

13. It is for the same reason, I suppose, that he has made the whole structure of the
Iliad, which was written at the height of his inspiration, full of action and conflict, while the Odyssey for the most
part consists of narrative, as is characteristic of old age. Accordingly, in the Odyssey Homer may be likened to a
sinking sun, whose grandeur remains without its intensity. He does not in the Odyssey maintain so high a pitch as in
those poems of Ilium. His sublimities are not evenly sustained and free from the liability to sink; there is not the
same profusion of accumulated passions, nor the supple and oratorical style, packed with images drawn from real life.
You seem to see henceforth the ebb and flow of greatness, and a fancy roving in the fabulous and incredible, as though
the ocean were withdrawing into itself and was being laid bare within its own confines. 14. In saying this I have not forgotten the tempests in the Odyssey and the story of the Cyclops and
the like. If I speak of old age, it is nevertheless the old age of Homer. The fabulous element, however, prevails
throughout this poem over the real. The object of this digression has been, as I said, to show how easily great natures
in their decline are sometimes diverted into absurdity, as in the incident of the wine-skin and of the men who were fed
like swine by Circe (whining porkers, as Zoilus called them), and of Zeus like a nestling nurtured by the
doves, and of the hero who was without food for ten days upon the wreck, and of the incredible tale of the slaying of
the suitors (Odyssey 9. 182;10.17;10.237;12.62;12.447;22.79.) For what else can we
term these things than veritable dreams of Zeus? 15. These observations with regard to the
Odyssey should be made for another reason — in order that you may know that the genius of great poets and
prose-writers, as their passion declines, finds its final expression in the delineation of character. For such are the
details which Homer gives, with an eye to characterisation, of life in the home of Odysseus; they form as it were a
comedy of manners.

X

LET us next consider whether we can point to anything further that contributes to sublimity of
style. Now, there inhere in all things by nature certain constituents which are part and parcel of their substance. It
must needs be, therefore, that we shall find one source of the sublime in the systematic selection of the most
important elements, and the power of forming, by their mutual combination, what may be called one body. The former
process attracts the hearer by the choice of the ideas, the latter by the aggregation of those chosen. For instance,
Sappho everywhere chooses the emotions that attend delirious passion from its accompaniments in actual life. Wherein
does she demonstrate her supreme excellence? In the skill with which she selects and binds together the most striking
and vehement circumstances of passion:—

2. Peer of Gods he seemeth to me, the blissful

Man who sits and gazes at thee before him,

Close beside thee sits, and in silence hears thee

Silverly speaking,

Laughing love’s low laughter. Oh this, this only

Stirs the troubled heart in my breast to tremble!

For should I but see thee a little moment,

Straight is my voice hushed;

Yea, my tongue is broken, and through and through me

‘Neath the flesh impalpable fire runs tingling;

Nothing see mine eyes, and a noise of roaring

Waves in my ear sounds;

Sweat runs down in rivers, a tremor seizes

All my limbs, and paler than grass in autumn,

Caught by pains of menacing death, I falter,

Lost in the love-trance.

3. Are you not amazed how at one instant she summons, as though they were all alien from
herself and dispersed, soul, body, ears, tongue, eyes, colour? Uniting contradictions, she is, at one and the same
time, hot and cold, in her senses and out of her mind, for she is either terrified or at the point of death. The effect
desired is that not one passion only should be seen in her, but a concourse of the passions. All such things occur in
the case of lovers, but it is, as I said, the selection of the most striking of them and their combination into a
single whole that has produced the singular excellence of the passage. In the same way Homer, when describing tempests,
picks out the most appalling circumstances. 4. The author of the Arimaspeia thinks to
inspire awe in the following way:—

A marvel exceeding great is this withal to my soul —

Men dwell on the water afar from the land, where deep seas roll.

Wretches are they, for they reap but a harvest of travail and pain,

Their eyes on the stars ever dwell, while their hearts abide in the main.

Often, I ween, to the Gods are their hands upraised on high,

And with hearts in misery heavenward-lifted in prayer do they cry.

(Aristeas)

It is clear, I imagine, to everybody that there is more elegance than terror in these words. 5. But what says Homer? Let one instance be quoted from among many:—

And he burst on them like as a wave swift-rushing beneath black clouds,

Heaved huge by the winds, bursts down on a ship, and the wild foam shrouds

From the stem to the stern her hull, and the storm-blast’s terrible breath

Roars in the sail, and the heart of the shipmen shuddereth

In fear, for that scantly upborne are they now from the clutches of death.

(Iliad 15. 624-628).

6. Aratus has attempted to convert this same expression to his own use:—

And a slender plank averteth their death.

Only, he has made it trivial and neat instead of terrible. Furthermore, he has put bounds to the danger by saying
A plank keeps off death. After all, it does keep it off. Homer, however, does not for one moment set
a limit to the terror of the scene, but draws a vivid picture of men continually in peril of their lives, and often
within an ace of perishing with each successive wave. Moreover, he has in the words hypek thanatoio, forced
into union, by a kind of unnatural compulsion, prepositions not usually compounded. He has thus tortured his line into
the similitude of the impending calamity, and by the constriction of the verse has excellently figured the disaster and
almost stamped upon the expression the very form and pressure of the danger, hupek thanatoio pherontai.
7. This is true also of Archilochus in his account of the shipwreck and of Demosthenes in the
passage which begins ‘It was evening,’ where he describes the bringing of the news (On the Crown
169)“. The salient points they winnowed, one might say, according to merit and massed them together, inserting
in the midst nothing frivolous, mean, or trivial. For these faults mar the effect of the whole, just as though they
introduced chinks or fissures into stately and co-ordered edifices, whose walls are compacted by their reciprocal
adjustment.

XI

AN allied excellence to those already set forth is that which is termed amplification. This
figure is employed when the narrative or the course of a forensic argument admits, from section to section, of many
starting-points and many pauses, and elevated expressions follow, one after the other, in an unbroken succession and in
an ascending order. 2. And this may be effected either by way of the rhetorical treatment of
commonplaces, or by way of intensification (whether events or arguments are to be strongly presented), or by the
orderly arrangement of facts or of passions; indeed, there are innumerable kinds of amplification. Only, the orator
must in every case remember that none of these methods by itself, apart from sublimity, forms a complete whole, unless
indeed where pity is to be excited or an opponent to be disparaged. In all other cases of amplification, if you take
away the sublime, you will remove as it were the soul from the body. For the vigour of the amplification at once loses
its intensity and its substance when not resting on a firm basis of the sublime. 3. Clearness,
however, demands that we should define concisely how our present precepts differ from the point under consideration a
moment ago, namely the marking-out of the most striking conceptions and the unification of them; and wherein,
generally, the sublime differs from amplification.

XII

Now the definition given by the writers on rhetoric does not satisfy me. Amplification is, say they, discourse which
invests the subject with grandeur. This definition, however, would surely apply in equal measure to sublimity and
passion and figurative language, since they too invest the discourse with a certain degree of grandeur. The point of
distinction between them seems to me to be that sublimity consists in elevation, while amplification embraces a
multitude of details. Consequently, sublimity is often comprised in a single thought, while amplification is
universally associated with a certain magnitude and abundance. 2. Amplification (to sum the
matter up in a general way) is an aggregation of all the constituent parts and topics of a subject, lending strength to
the argument by dwelling upon it, and differing herein from proof that, while the latter demonstrates the matter under
investigation. . . . . . . . .

With his vast riches Plato swells, like some sea, into a greatness which expands on every side. 3. Wherefore it is, I suppose, that the orator [Sc. Demosthenes] in his utterance shows, as one who
appeals more to the passions, all the glow of a fiery spirit. Plato, on the other hand, firm-planted in his pride and
magnificent stateliness, cannot indeed be accused of coldness, but he has not the same vehemence. 4. And it is in these same respects, my dear friend Terentianus, that it seems to me (supposing
always that we Greeks are allowed to have an opinion upon the point) that Cicero differs from Demosthenes in elevated
passages. For the latter is characterised by sublimity which is for the most part rugged, Cicero by profusion. Our
orator, owing to the fact that in his vehemence, — aye, and in his speed, power and intensity, — he can as it were
consume by fire and carry away all before him, may be compared to a thunderbolt or flash of lightning. Cicero, on the
other hand, it seems to me, after the manner of a widespread conflagration, rolls on with all-devouring flames, having
within him an ample and abiding store of fire, distributed now at this point now at that, and fed by an unceasing
succession. 5. This, however, you [Sc. Romans] will be better able to decide; but the great
opportunity of Demosthenes’ high-pitched elevation comes where intense utterance and vehement passion are in question,
and in passages in which the audience is to be utterly enthralled. The profusion of Cicero is in place where the hearer
must be flooded with words, for it is appropriate to the treatment of commonplaces, and to perorations for the most
part and digressions, and to all descriptive and declamatory passages, and to writings on history and natural science,
and to many other departments of literature.

XIII

To return from my digression. Although Plato thus flows on with noiseless stream, he is none the less elevated. You
know this because you have read the Republic and are familiar with his manner. ‘Those,’ says he, ‘who are
destitute of wisdom and goodness and are ever present at carousels and the like are carried on the downward path, it
seems, and wander thus throughout their life. They never look upwards to the truth, nor do they lift their heads, nor
enjoy any pure and lasting pleasure, but like cattle they have their eyes ever cast downwards and bent upon the ground
and upon their feeding-places, and they graze and grow fat and breed, and through their insatiate desire of these
delights they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of iron and kill one another in their greed. (Republic 9. 586a)

2. This writer shows us, if only we were willing to pay him heed, that another way
(beyond anything we have mentioned) leads to the sublime. And what, and what manner of way, may that be? It is the
imitation and emulation of previous great poets and writers. And let this, my dear friend, be an aim to which we
stedfastly apply ourselves. For many men are carried away by the spirit of others as if inspired, just as it is related
of the Pythian priestess when she approaches the tripod, where there is a rift in the ground which (they say) exhales
divine vapour. By heavenly power thus communicated she is impregnated and straightway delivers oracles in virtue of the
afflatus. Similarly from the great natures of the men of old there are borne in upon the souls of those who emulate
them (as from sacred caves) what we may describe as effluences, so that even those who seem little likely to
be possessed are thereby inspired and succumb to the spell of the others’ greatness. 3. Was
Herodotus alone a devoted imitator of Homer? No, Stesichorus even before his time, and Archilochus, and above all
Plato, who from the great Homeric source drew to himself innumerable tributary streams. And perhaps we should have
found it necessary to prove this, point by point, had not Ammonius and his followers selected and recorded the
particulars. 4. This proceeding is not plagiarism; it is like taking an impression from
beautiful forms or figures or other works of art. And it seems to me that there would not have been so fine a bloom of
perfection on Plato’s philosophical doctrines, and that he would not in many cases have found his way to poetical
subject-matter and modes of expression, unless he had with all his heart and mind struggled with Homer for the primacy,
entering the lists like a young champion matched against the man whom all admire, and showing perhaps too much love of
contention and breaking a lance with him as it were, but deriving some profit from the contest none the less. For, as
Hesiod says, ‘This strife is good for mortals’ (Works and Days 24). And in truth that struggle
for the crown of glory is noble and best deserves the victory in which even to be worsted by one’s predecessors brings
no discredit.

XIV

Accordingly it is well that we ourselves also, when elaborating anything which requires lofty expression and
elevated conception, should shape some idea in our minds as to how perchance Homer would have said this very thing, or
how it would have been raised to the sublime by Plato or Demosthenes or by the historian Thucydides. For those
personages, presenting themselves to us and inflaming our ardour and as it were illumining our path, will carry our
minds in a mysterious way to the high standards of sublimity which are imaged within us. 2. Still more effectual will it be to suggest this question to our thoughts, ‘What sort of hearing
would Homer, had he been present, or Demosthenes have given to this or that when said by me, or how would they have
been affected by the other?’ For the ordeal is indeed a severe one, if we presuppose such a tribunal and theatre for
our own utterances, and imagine that we are undergoing a scrutiny of our writings before these great heroes, acting as
judges and witnesses. 3. A greater incentive still will be supplied if you add the question,
‘In what spirit will each succeeding age listen to me who have written thus?’ But if one shrinks from the very thought
of uttering aught that may transcend the term of his own life and time, the conceptions of his mind must necessarily be
incomplete, blind, and as it were untimely born, since they are by no means brought to the perfection needed to ensure
a futurity of fame.

XV

IMAGES, moreover, contribute greatly, my young friend, to dignity, elevation, and power as a
pleader. In this sense some call them mental representations. In a general way the name of image or
imagination is applied to every idea of the mind, in whatever form it presents itself, which gives birth to
speech. But at the present day the word is predominantly used in cases where, carried away by enthusiasm and passion,
you think you see what you describe, and you place it before the eyes of your hearers. 2. Further, you will be aware of the fact that an image has one purpose with the orators and another
with the poets, and that the design of the poetical image is enthralment, of the rhetorical — vivid description. Both,
however, seek to stir the passions and the emotions.

Ah! she will slay me! whither can I fly? (Euripides, Iphigeneia in Taurus 291)

In these scenes the poet himself saw Furies, and the image in his mind he almost compelled his audience also to
behold. 3. Now, Euripides is most assiduous in giving the utmost tragic effect to these two
emotions — fits of love and madness. Herein he succeeds more, perhaps, than in any other respect, although he is daring
enough to invade all the other regions of the imagination. Notwithstanding that he is by nature anything but elevated,
he forces his own genius, in many passages, to tragic heights, and everywhere in the matter of sublimity it is true of
him (to adopt Homer’s words) that

The tail of him scourgeth his ribs and his flanks to left and to right,

And he lasheth himself into frenzy, and spurreth him on to the fight. (Iliad 20.170)

4. When the Sun hands the reins to Phaethon, he says

‘Thou, driving, trespass not on Libya’s sky,

Whose heat, by dews untempered, else shall split

Thy car asunder.’

And after that,

‘Speed onward toward the Pleiads seven thy course.’

Thus far the boy heard; then he snatched the reins:

He lashed the flanks of that wing-wafted team;

Loosed rein; and they through folds of cloudland soared.

Hard after on a fiery star his sire

Rode, counselling his son — ‘Ho! thither drive!

Hither thy car turn — hither!’

Would you not say that the soul of the writer enters the chariot at the same moment as Phaethon and shares in his
dangers and in the rapid flight of his steeds? For it could never have conceived such a picture had it not been borne
in no less swift career on that journey through the heavens. The same is true of the words which Euripides attributes
to his Cassandra:—

O chariot-loving Trojans.

5. Aeschylus, too, ventures on images of a most heroic stamp. An example will be found in
his Seven against Thebes, where he says

For seven heroes, squadron-captains fierce,

Over a black-rimmed shield have slain a bull,

And, dipping in the bull’s blood each his hand,

By Ares and Enyo, and by Panic

Lover of blood, have sworn. Seven Against Thebes 42)

In mutual fealty they devoted themselves by that joint oath to a relentless doom. Sometimes, however, he introduces
ideas that are rough-hewn and uncouth and harsh; and Euripides, when stirred by the spirit of emulation, comes
perilously near the same fault, even in spite of his own natural bent. 6. Thus in Aeschylus
the palace of Lycurgus at the coming of Dionysus is strangely represented as possessed:—

A frenzy thrills the hall; the roofs are bacchant

With ecstasy:

an idea which Euripides has echoed, in other words, it is true, and with some abatement of its crudity, where he
says:—

The whole mount shared their bacchic ecstasy. (Bacchae 726)

7. Magnificent are the images which Sophocles has conceived of the death of Oedipus, who
makes ready his burial amid the portents of the sky (Oedipus at Colonus 1586). Magnificent,
too, is the passage where the Greeks are on the point of sailing away and Achilles appears above his tomb to those who
are putting out to sea — a scene which I doubt whether anyone has depicted more vividly than Simonides. But it is
impossible to cite all the examples that present themselves. 8. It is no doubt true that those
which are found in the poets contain, as I said, a tendency to exaggeration in the way of the fabulous and that they
transcend in every way the credible, but in oratorical imagery the best feature is always its reality and truth.
Whenever the form of a speech is poetical and fabulous and breaks into every kind of impossibility, such digressions
have a strange and alien air. For example, the clever orators forsooth of our day, like the tragedians, see Furies, and
— fine fellows that they are — cannot even understand that Orestes when he cries

Unhand me! — of mine Haunting Fiends thou art —

Dost grip my waist to hurl me into hell! (Euripides, Orestes 264)

has these fancies because he is mad. 9. What, then, can oratorical imagery effect? Well, it
is able in many ways to infuse vehemence and passion into spoken words, while more particularly when it is combined
with the argumentative passages it not only persuades the hearer but actually makes him its slave. Here is an example.
‘Why, if at this very moment,’ says Demosthenes, ‘a loud cry were to be heard in front of the courts, and we were told
that the prison-house lies open and the prisoners are in full flight, no one, whether he be old or young, is so
heedless as not to lend aid to the utmost of his power; aye, and if any one came forward and said that yonder stands
the man who let them go, the offender would be promptly put to death without a hearing’ (Against
Timocrates, 208)10. In the same way, too, Hyperides on being accused, after he had
proposed the liberation of the slaves subsequently to the great defeat, said ‘This proposal was framed, not by the
orator, but by the battle of Chaeroneia.’ The speaker has here at one and the same time followed a train of reasoning
and indulged a flight of imagination. He has, therefore, passed the bounds of mere persuasion by the boldness of his
conception. 11. By a sort of natural law in all such matters we always attend to whatever
possesses superior force; whence it is that we are drawn away from demonstration pure and simple to any startling image
within whose dazzling brilliancy the argument lies concealed. And it is not unreasonable that we should be affected in
this way, for when two things are brought together, the more powerful always attracts to itself the virtue of the
weaker. 12. It will be enough to have said thus much with regard to examples of the sublime in
thought, when produced by greatness of soul, imitation, or imagery.

XVI

HERE, however, in due order comes the place assigned to Figures; for they, if handled in the proper
manner, will contribute, as I have said, in no mean degree to sublimity. But since to treat thoroughly of them all at
the present moment would be a great, or rather an endless task, we will now, with the object of proving our
proposition, run over a few only of those which produce elevation of diction. 2. Demosthenes
is bringing forward a reasoned vindication of his public policy. What was the natural way of treating the subject? It
was this. ‘You were not wrong, you who engaged in the struggle for the freedom of Greece. You have domestic warrant for
it. For the warriors of Marathon did no wrong, nor they of Salamis, nor they of Plataea.’ When, however, as though
suddenly inspired by heaven and as it were frenzied by the God of Prophecy, he utters his famous oath by the champions
of Greece (‘assuredly ye did no wrong; I swear it by those who at Marathon stood in the forefront of the
danger,’(On the Crown 208) ), in the public view by this one Figure of Adjuration, which I here
term Apostrophe, he deifies his ancestors. He brings home the thought that we ought to swear by those who have
thus nobly died as we swear by Gods, and he fills the mind of the judges with the high spirit of those who there bore
the brunt of the danger, and he has transformed the natural course of the argument into transcendent sublimity and
passion and that secure belief which rests upon strange and prodigious oaths. He instils into the minds of his hearers
the conviction — which acts as a medicine and an antidote — that they should, uplifted by these eulogies, feel no less
proud of the fight against Philip than of the triumph at Marathon and Salamis. By all these means he carries his
hearers clean away with him through the employment of a single figure. 3. It is said, indeed,
that the germ of the oath is found in Eupolis:—

For, by the fight I won at Marathon,

No one shall vex my soul and rue it not.

But it is not sublime to swear by a person in any chance way; the sublimity depends upon the place and the manner
and the circumstances and the motive. Now in the passage of Eupolis there is nothing but the mere oath, addressed to
the Athenians when still prosperous and in no need of comfort. Furthermore, the poet in his oath has not made
divinities of the men in order so to create in his hearers a worthy conception of their valour, but he has wandered
away from those who stood in the forefront of the danger to an inanimate thing — the fight. In Demosthenes the oath is
framed for vanquished men, with the intention that Chaeroneia should no longer appear a failure to the Athenians. He
gives them at one and the same time, as I remarked, a demonstration that they have done no wrong, an example, the sure
evidence of oaths, a eulogy, an exhortation. 4. And since the orator was likely to be
confronted with the objection, ‘You are speaking of the defeat which has attended your administration, and yet
you swear by victories,’ in what follows he consequently measures even individual words, and chooses them
unerringly, showing that even in the revels of the imagination sobriety is required. ‘Those,’ he says, ‘who stood in
the forefront of the danger at Marathon, and those who fought by sea at Salamis and Artemisium, and those who stood in
the ranks at Plataea.’ Nowhere does he use the word ‘conquered,’ but at every turn he has evaded any indication of the
result, since it was fortunate and the opposite of what happened at Chaeroneia. So he at once rushes forward and
carries his hearer off his feet. ‘All of whom,’ says he, ‘were accorded a public burial by the state, Aeschines, and
not the successful only.’

XVII

I ought not, dear friend, to omit at this point an observation of my own, which shall be most concisely stated. It
is that, by a sort of natural law, figures bring support to the sublime, and on their part derive support in turn from
it in a wonderful degree. Where and how, I will explain. The cunning use of figures is peculiarly subject to suspicion,
and produces an impression of ambush, plot, fallacy. This is so when the plea is addressed to a judge with absolute
powers, and particularly to despots, kings, and leaders in positions of superiority. Such an one at once feels
resentment if, like a foolish boy, he is tricked by the paltry figures of the oratorical craftsman. Construing the
fallacy into a personal affront, sometimes he becomes quite wild with rage, or if he controls his anger, steels himself
utterly against persuasive words. Wherefore a figure is at its best when the very fact that it is a figure escapes
attention. 2. Accordingly, sublimity and passion form an antidote and a wonderful help against
the mistrust which attends upon the use of figures. The art which craftily employs them lies hid and escapes all future
suspicion, when once it has been associated with beauty and sublimity. A sufficient proof is the passage already
adduced, ‘By the men of Marathon I swear.’ By what means has the orator here concealed the figure? Clearly, by the very
excess of light. For just as all dim lights are extinguished in the blaze of the sun, so do the artifices of rhetoric
fade from view when bathed in the pervading splendour of sublimity. 3. Something like this
happens also in the art of painting. For although light and shade, as depicted in colours, lie side by side upon the
same surface, light nevertheless meets the vision first, and not only stands out, but also seems far nearer. So also
with the manifestations of passion and the sublime in literature. They lie nearer to our minds through a sort of
natural kinship and through their own radiance, and always strike our attention before the figures, whose art they
throw into the shade and as it were keep in concealment.

XVIII

But, what are we next to say of questions and interrogations? Is it not precisely by the visualizing
qualities of these figures that Demosthenes strives to make his speeches far more effective and impressive? ‘Pray tell
me, — tell me, you sir, — do you wish to go about and inquire of one another, Is there any news? Why, what greater news
could there be than this, that a Macedonian is subduing Greece? Is Philip dead? No; but he is ill. Dead or ill, what
difference to you? Should anything happen to him, you will speedily create another Philip’ (Philippic
1, 10). Again he says, ‘Let us sail against Macedonia. Where shall we find a landing-place? someone asks. The
war itself will discover the weak places in Philip’s position’(Philippic 1, 44) All this, if
stated plainly and directly, would have been altogether weaker. As it is, the excitement, and the rapid play of
question and answer, and the plan of meeting his own objections as though they were urged by another, have by the help
of the figure made the language used not only more elevated but also more convincing. 2. For an exhibition of passion has a greater effect when it seems not to be studied by the speaker
himself but to be inspired by the occasion; and questions asked and answered by oneself simulate a natural outburst of
passion. For just as those who are interrogated by others experience a sudden excitement and answer the inquiry
incisively and with the utmost candour, so the figure of question and answer leads the hearer to suppose that each
deliberate thought is struck out and uttered on the spur of the moment, and so beguiles his reason. We may further
quote that passage of Herodotus which is regarded as one of the most elevated: ‘if thus.
. . . . ’

XIX

The words issue forth without connecting links and are poured out as it were, almost outstripping the speaker
himself. ‘Locking their shields,’ says Xenophon, ‘they thrust fought slew fell’ (Hellenica IV. 3,
19). 2. And so with the words of Eurylochus:—

There amidst of the forest-glens a beautiful palace we found. (Odyssey 10. 251-252)

For the lines detached from one another, but none the less hurried along, produce the impression of an agitation
which interposes obstacles and at the same time adds impetuosity. This result Homer has produced by the omission of
conjunctions.

XX

A powerful effect usually attends the union of figures for a common object, when two or three mingle together as it
were in partnership, and contribute a fund of strength, persuasiveness, beauty. Thus, in the speech against Meidias,
examples will be found of asyndeton, interwoven with instances of anaphora and diatyposis.
‘For the smiter can do many things (some of which the sufferer cannot even describe to another) by attitude, by look,
by voice’ (Against Midias, 72). 2. Then, in order that the narrative
may not, as it advances, continue in the same groove (for continuance betokens tranquillity, while passion — the
transport and commotion of the soul — sets order at defiance), straightway he hurries off to other Asyndeta
and Repetitions. ‘By attitude, by look, by voice, when he acts with insolence, when he acts like an enemy,
when he smites with his fists, when he smites you like a slave.’ By these words the orator produces the same effect as
the assailant — he strikes the mind of the judges by the swift succession of blow on blow. 3. Starting from this point again, as suddenly as a gust of wind, he makes another attack. ‘When
smitten with blows of fists,’ he says, ‘when smitten upon the cheek. These things stir the blood, these drive men
beyond themselves, when unused to insult. No one can, in describing them, convey a notion of the indignity they imply.’
So he maintains throughout, though with continual variation, the essential character of the Repetitions and
Asyndeta. In this way, with him, order is disorderly, and on the other hand disorder contains a certain
element of order.

XXI

Come now, add, if you please, in these cases connecting particles after the fashion of the followers of Isocrates.
‘Furthermore, this fact too must not be overlooked that the smiter may do many things, first by attitude, then by look,
then again by the mere voice.’ You will feel, if you transcribe the passage in this orderly fashion, that the rugged
impetuosity of passion, once you make it smooth and equable by adding the copulatives, falls pointless and immediately
loses all its fire. 2. Just as the binding of the limbs of runners deprives them of their
power of rapid motion, so also passion, when shackled by connecting links and other appendages, chafes at the
restriction, for it loses the freedom of its advance and its rapid emission as though from an engine of war.

XXII

Hyperbata, or inversions, must be placed under the same category. They are departures in the order
of expressions or ideas from the natural sequence; and they bear, it may be said, the very stamp and impress of
vehement emotion. Just as those who are really moved by anger, or fear, or indignation, or jealousy, or any other
emotion (for the passions are many and countless, and none can give their number), at times turn aside, and when they
have taken one thing as their subject often leap to another, foisting in the midst some irrelevant matter, and then
again wheel round to their original theme, and driven by their vehemence, as by a veering wind, now this way now that
with rapid changes, transform their expressions, their thoughts, the order suggested by a natural sequence, into
numberless variations of every kind; so also among the best writers it is by means of hyberbaton that
imitation approaches the effects of nature. For art is perfect when it seems to be nature, and nature hits the mark
when she contains art hidden within her. We may illustrate by the words of Dionysius of Phocaea in Herodotus. ‘Our
fortunes lie on a razor’s edge, men of Ionia; for freedom or for bondage, and that the bondage of runaway slaves. Now,
therefore, if you choose to submit to hardships, you will have toil for the moment, but you will be able to overcome
your foes (Histories, 6.11). 2. Here the natural order would have been:
‘Men of Ionia, now is the time for you to meet hardships; for our fortunes lie on a razor’s edge.’ But the speaker
postpones the words ‘Men of Ionia.’ He starts at once with the danger of the situation, as though in such imminent
peril he had no time at all to address his hearers. Moreover, he inverts the order of ideas. For instead of saying that
they ought to endure hardships, which is the real object of his exhortation, he first assigns the reason because of
which they ought to endure hardships, in the words ‘our fortunes lie on a razor’s edge.’ The result is that what he
says seems not to be premeditated but to be prompted by the necessities of the moment. 3. In
a still higher degree Thucydides is most bold and skilful in disjoining from one another by means of transpositions
things that are by nature intimately united and indivisible. Demosthenes is not so masterful as Thucydides, but of all
writers he most abounds in this kind of figure, and through his use of hyperbata makes a great impression of
vehemence, yes and of unpremeditated speech, and moreover draws his hearers with him into all the perils of his long
inversions. 4. For he will often leave in suspense the thought which he has begun to
express, and meanwhile he will heap, into a position seemingly alien and unnatural, one thing upon another
parenthetically and from any external source whatsoever, throwing his hearer into alarm lest the whole structure of his
words should fall to pieces, and compelling him in anxious sympathy to share the peril of the speaker; and then
unexpectedly, after a long interval, he adds the long-awaited conclusion at the right place, namely the end, and
produces a far greater effect by this very use, so bold and hazardous, of hyperbaton. Examples may be spared because of
their abundance.

XXIII

THE figures, which are termed polyptota — accumulations, and variations, and climaxes — are
excellent weapons of public oratory, as you are aware, and contribute to elegance and to every form of sublimity and
passion. Again, how greatly do changes of cases, tenses, persons, numbers, genders, diversify and enliven exposition.
2. Where the use of numbers is concerned, I would point out that style is not adorned only
or chiefly by those words which are, as far as their forms go, in the singular but in meaning are, when examined, found
to be plural: as in the lines

A countless crowd forthright

Far-ranged along the beaches were clamouring “Thunny in sight!”

The fact is more worthy of observation that in certain cases the use of the plural (for the singular) falls with
still more imposing effect and impresses us by the very sense of multitude which the number conveys. 3. Such are the words of Oedipus in Sophocles:

O nuptials, nuptials, (Oedipus Tyrannus 1403)

Ye gendered me, and, having gendered, brought

To light the selfsame seed, and so revealed

Sires, brothers, sons, in one — all kindred blood! —

Brides, mothers, wives, in one! — yea, whatso deeds

Most shameful among humankind are done.

The whole enumeration can be summed up in a single proper name — on the one side Oedipus, on the other Jocasta. None
the less, the expansion of the number into the plural helps to pluralise the misfortunes as well. There is a similar
instance of multiplication in the line:—

Forth Hectors and Sarpedons marching came,

and in that passage of Plato concerning the Athenians which we have quoted elsewhere. 4. ‘For no Pelopes, nor Cadmi, nor Aegypti and Danai, nor the rest of the crowd of born foreigners
dwell with us, but ours is the land of pure Greeks, free from foreign admixture,’ etc.(Menexenus
245d). For naturally a theme seems more imposing to the ear when proper names are thus added, one upon the
other, in troops. But this must only be done in cases in which the subject admits of amplification or redundancy or
exaggeration or passion — one or more of these — since we all know that a richly caparisoned style is extremely
pretentious.

XXIV

Further (to take the converse case) particulars which are combined from the plural into the singular are sometimes
most elevated in appearance. ‘Thereafter,’ says Demosthenes, ‘all Peloponnesus was at variance’ (On
the Crown, 18). ‘And when Phrynichus had brought out a play entitled the Capture of Miletus, the whole
theatre burst into tears (Histories 6.21). For the compression of the number from multiplicity
into unity gives more fully the feeling of a single body. 2. In both cases the explanation
of the elegance of expression is, I think, the same. Where the words are singular, to make them plural is the mark of
unlooked-for passion; and where they are plural, the rounding of a number of things into a fine-sounding singular is
surprising owing to the converse change.

XXV

If you introduce things which are past as present and now taking place, you will make your story no longer a
narration but an actuality. Xenophon furnishes an illustration. ‘A man,’ says he, ‘has fallen under Cyrus’ horse, and
being trampled strikes the horse with his sword in the belly. He rears and unseats Cyrus, who falls (Xenophon, Cyropaideia 7.1.37).’ This construction is specially characteristic of Thucydides.

XXVI

In like manner the interchange of persons produces a vivid impression, and often makes the hearer feel that he is
moving in the midst of perils:—

Thou hadst said that with toil unspent, and all unwasted of limb,

They closed in the grapple of war, so fiercely they rushed to the fray; (Iliad XV. 697)

and the line of Aratus:—

Never in that month launch thou forth amid lashing seas.

2. So also Herodotus: ‘From the city of Elephantine thou shalt sail upwards, and then
shalt come to a level plain; and after crossing this tract, thou shalt embark upon another vessel and sail for two
days, and then shalt thou come to a great city whose name is Meroe (Herodotus, Histories 2.
29)‘ Do you observe, my friend, how he leads you in imagination through the region and makes you see what you
hear? All such cases of direct personal address place the hearer on the very scene of action. 3. So it is when you seem to be speaking, not to all and sundry, but to a single individual:—

But Tydeides — thou wouldst not have known him, for whom that hero fought. (Iliad V. 85)

You will make your hearer more excited and more attentive, and full of active participation, if you keep him on the
alert by words addressed to himself.

XXVII

There is further the case in which a writer, when relating something about a person, suddenly breaks off and
converts himself into that selfsame person. This species of figure is a kind of outburst of passion:

Then with a far-ringing shout to the Trojans Hector cried,

Bidding them rush on the ships, bidding leave the spoils blood-dyed —

And whomso I mark from the galleys aloof on the farther side,

I will surely devise his death. (Iliad XV. 346)

The poet assigns the task of narration, as is fit, to himself, but the abrupt threat he suddenly, with no note of
warning, attributes to the angered chief. He would have been frigid had he inserted the words, ‘Hector said so and so.’
As it is, the swift transition of the narrative has outstripped the swift transitions of the narrator. 2. Accordingly this figure should be used by preference when a sharp crisis does not suffer the
writer to tarry, but constrains him to pass at once from one person to another. An example will be found in Hecataeus:
‘Ceyx treated the matter gravely, and straightway bade the descendants of Heracles depart; for I am not able to succour
you. In order, therefore, that ye may not perish yourselves and injure me, get you gone to some other country.’
3. Demosthenes in dealing with Aristogeiton has, somewhat differently, employed this variation
of person to betoken the quick play of emotion. ‘And will none of you,’ he asks, ‘be found to be stirred by loathing or
even by anger at the violent deeds of this vile and shameless fellow, who — you whose licence of speech, most abandoned
of men, is not confined by barriers nor by doors, which might perchance be opened!(Against Aristogiton
1, 27)’ With the sense thus incomplete, he suddenly breaks off and in his anger almost tears asunder a single
expression into two persons, — ‘he who, O thou most abandoned!’ Thus, although he has turned aside his address and
seems to have left Aristogeiton, yet through passion he directs it upon him with far greater force.
4. Similarly with the words of Penelope:—

Herald, with what behest art thou come from the suitor-band?

To give to the maids of Odysseus the godlike their command

To forsake their labours, and yonder for them the banquet to lay?

I would that of all their wooing this were the latest day,

That this were the end of your banquets, your uttermost revelling-hour,

Ye that assemble together and all our substance devour,

The wise Telemachus’ store, as though ye never had heard,

In the days overpast of your childhood, your fathers’ praising word,

How good Odysseus was. (Odyssey IV. 681-689)

XXVIII

AS to whether or no Periphrasis contributes to the sublime, no one, I think, will hesitate. For just
as in music the so-called accompaniments bring out the charm of the melody, so also periphrasis often harmonises with
the normal expression and adds greatly to its beauty, especially if it has a quality which is not inflated and
dissonant but pleasantly tempered. 2. Plato will furnish an instance in proof at the
opening of his Funeral Oration. ‘In truth they have gained from us their rightful tribute, in the enjoyment of which
they proceed along their destined path, escorted by their country publicly, and privately each by his kinsmen
(Menexenus 236d).’ Death he calls ‘their destined path,’ and the tribute of accustomed rites he
calls ‘being escorted publicly by their fatherland.’ Is it in a slight degree only that he has magnified the conception
by the use of these words? Has he not rather, starting with unadorned diction, made it musical, and shed over it like a
harmony the melodious rhythm which comes from periphrasis? 3. And Xenophon says, ‘You
regard toil as the guide to a joyous life. You have garnered in your souls the goodliest of all possessions and the
fittest for warriors. For you rejoice more in praise than in all else (Cyropaideia 1.5.12).’ In
using, instead of ‘you are willing to toil,’ the words ‘you deem toil the guide to a joyous life,’ and in expanding the
rest of the sentence in like manner, he has annexed to his eulogy a lofty idea. 4. And so with that
inimitable phrase of Herodotus: ‘The goddess afflicted those Scythians who had pillaged the temple with an unsexing
malady (Histories 1. 105. 4).’

XXIX

A hazardous business, however, eminently hazardous is periphrasis, unless it be handled with discrimination;
otherwise it speedily falls flat, with its odour of empty talk and its swelling amplitude. This is the reason why Plato
(who is always strong in figurative language, and at times unseasonably so) is taunted because in his Laws he says that
‘neither gold nor silver treasure should be allowed to establish itself and abide in the city (Laws
801b).’ The critic says that, if he had been forbidding the possession of cattle, he would obviously have spoken
of ovine and bovine treasure. 2. But our parenthetical disquisition with regard to the use
of figures as bearing upon the sublime has run to sufficient length, dear Terentianus; for all these things lend
additional passion and animation to style, and passion is as intimately allied with sublimity as sketches of character
with entertainment.

XXX

SINCE, however, it is the case that, in discourse, thought and diction are for the most part
developed one through the other, come let us proceed to consider any branches of the subject of diction which have so
far been neglected. Now it is, no doubt, superfluous to dilate to those who know it well upon the fact that the choice
of proper and striking words wonderfully attracts and enthralls the hearer, and that such a choice is the leading
ambition of all orators and writers, since it is the direct agency which ensures the presence in writings, as upon the
fairest statues, of the perfection of grandeur, beauty, mellowness, dignity, force, power, and any other high qualities
there may be, and breathes into dead things a kind of living voice. All this it is, I say, needless to mention, for
beautiful words are in very truth the peculiar light of thought. 2. It may, however, be
pointed out that stately language is not to be used everywhere, since to invest petty affairs with great and high-
sounding names would seem just like putting a full-sized tragic mask upon an infant boy. But in poetry and
. . .

XXXI

. . . full of vigour and racy; and so is Anacreon’s line,

‘That Thracian mare no longer do I heed.’ In this way, too, that original expression of Theopompus merits praise.
Owing to the correspondence between word and thing it seems to me to be highly expressive; and yet Caecilius for some
unexplained reason finds fault with it. ‘Philip,’ says Theopompus, ‘had a genius for stomaching things.’ Now a homely
expression of this kind is sometimes much more telling than elegant language, for it is understood at once since it is
drawn from common life, and the fact that it is familiar makes it only the more convincing. So the words ‘stomaching
things’ are used most strikingly of a man who, for the sake of attaining his own ends, patiently and with cheerfulness
endures things shameful and vile. 2. So with the words of Herodotus. ‘Cleomenes,’ he says,
‘went mad, and with a small sword cut the flesh of his own body into strips, until he slew himself by making mincemeat
of his entire person (Herodotus, Histories 6. 75).’ And, ‘Pythes fought on shipboard, until he
was utterly hacked to pieces (Herodotus, Histories 7. 181).’ These phrases graze the very edge
of vulgarity, but they are saved from vulgarity by their expressiveness.

XXXII

Further, with regard to the number of metaphors to be employed, Caecilius seems to assent to the view of those who
lay it down that not more than two, or at the most three, should be ranged together in the same passage. Demosthenes
is, in fact, the standard in this as in other matters. The proper time for using metaphors is when the passions roll
like a torrent and sweep a multitude of them down their resistless flood. 2. ‘Men,’ says
he, ‘who are vile flatterers, who have maimed their own fatherlands each one of them, who have toasted away their
liberty first to Philip and now to Alexander, who measure happiness by their belly and their lowest desires, and who
have overthrown that liberty and that freedom from despotic mastery which to the Greeks of an earlier time were the
rules and standards of good’ (Demosthenes, On the Crown, 296). Here the orator’s wrath against
the traitors throws a veil over the number of the tropes. 3. In the same spirit, Aristotle
and Theophrastus point out that the following phrases serve to soften bold metaphors — ‘as if,’ and ‘as it were,’ and
‘if one may so say,’ and ‘if one may venture such an expression’; for the qualifying words mitigate, they say, the
audacity of expression. 4. I accept that view, but still for number and boldness of
metaphors I maintain, as I said in dealing with figures, that strong and timely passion and noble sublimity are the
appropriate palliatives. For it is the nature of the passions, in their vehement rush, to sweep and thrust everything
before them, or rather to demand hazardous turns as altogether indispensable. They do not allow the hearer leisure to
criticise the number of the metaphors because he is carried away by the fervour of the speaker. 5. Moreover, in the treatment of commonplaces and in descriptions there is nothing so impressive as
a number of tropes following close one upon the other. It is by this means that in Xenophon the anatomy of the human
tabernacle is magnificently depicted, and still more divinely in Plato. Plato says that its head is a citadel; in the
midst, between the head and the breast, is built the neck like some isthmus. The vertebrae, he says, are fixed beneath
like pivots. Pleasure is a bait which tempts men to ill, the tongue the test of taste; the heart is the knot of the
veins and the wellspring of the blood that courses round impetuously, and it is stationed in the guard-house of the
body. The passages by which the blood races this way and that he names alleys. He says that the gods, contriving
succour for the beating of the heart (which takes place when dangers are expected, and when wrath excites it, since it
then reaches a fiery heat), have implanted the lungs, which are soft and bloodless and have pores within, to serve as a
buffer, in order that the heart may, when its inward wrath boils over, beat against a yielding substance and so escape
injury. The seat of the desires he compared to the women’s apartments in a house, that of anger to the men’s. The
spleen he called the napkin of the inward parts, whence it is filled with secretions and grows to a great and festering
bulk. After this, the gods canopied the whole with flesh, putting forward the flesh as a defence against injuries from
without, as though it were a hair-cushion. The blood he called the fodder of the flesh. ‘In order to promote
nutrition,’ he continues, ‘ they irrigated the body, cutting conduits as in gardens, in order that, with the body
forming a set of tiny channels, the streams of the veins might flow as from a never-failing source.’ When the end
comes, he says that the cables of the soul are loosed like those of a ship, and she is allowed to go free (Plato, Timaeus 65c-85e). 6. Examples of a similar nature are to be found in a
never-ending series. But those indicated are enough to show that figurative language possesses great natural power, and
that metaphors contribute to the sublime; and at the same time that it is impassioned and descriptive passages which
rejoice in them to the greatest extent. 7. It is obvious, however, even though I do not
dwell upon it, that the use of tropes, like all other beauties of expression, is apt to lead to excess. On this score
Plato himself is much criticised, since he is often carried away by a sort of frenzy of words into strong and harsh
metaphors and into inflated allegory. ‘For it is not readily observed,’ he says, ‘that a city ought to be mixed like a
bowl, in which the mad wine seethes when it has been poured in, though when chastened by another god who is sober,
falling thus into noble company, it makes a good and temperate drink’ (Plato, Laws 773c). For
to call water ‘a sober god,’ and mixing ‘chastening,’ is — the critics say — the language of a poet, and one who is in
truth far from sober. 8. Fastening upon such defects, however, Caecilius ventured, in his
writings in praise of Lysias, to make the assertion that Lysias was altogether superior to Plato. In so doing he gave
way to two blind impulses of passion. Loving Lysias better even than himself, he nevertheless hates Plato more
perfectly than he loves Lysias. In fact, he is carried away by the spirit of contention, and even his premisses are
not, as he thought, admitted. For he prefers the orator as faultless and immaculate to Plato as one who has often made
mistakes. But the truth is not of this nature, nor anything like it.

XXXIII

COME, now, let us take some writer who is really immaculate and beyond reproach. Is it not worth
while, on this very point, to raise the general question whether we ought to give the preference, in poems and prose
writings, to grandeur with some attendant faults, or to success which is moderate but altogether sound and free from
error? Aye, and further, whether a greater number of excellences, or excellences higher in quality, would in literature
rightly bear away the palm? For these are inquiries appropriate to a treatise on the sublime, and they imperatively
demand a settlement. 2. For my part, I am well aware that lofty genius is far removed from
flawlessness; for invariable accuracy incurs the risk of pettiness, and in the sublime, as in great fortunes, there
must be something which is overlooked. It may be necessarily the case that low and average natures remain as a rule
free from failing and in greater safety because they never run a risk or seek to scale the heights, while great
endowments prove insecure because of their very greatness. 3. In the second place, I am
not ignorant that it naturally happens that the worse side of human character is always the more easily recognised, and
that the memory of errors remains indelible, while that of excellences quickly dies away. 4. I have myself noted not a few errors on the part of Homer and other writers of the greatest
distinction, and the slips they have made afford me anything but pleasure. Still I do not term them wilful errors, but
rather oversights of a random and casual kind, due to neglect and introduced with all the heedlessness of genius.
Consequently I do not waver in my view that excellences higher in quality, even if not sustained throughout, should
always on a comparison be voted the first place, because of their sheer elevation of spirit if for no other reason.
Granted that Apollonius in his Argonautica shows himself a poet who does not trip, and that in his pastorals
Theocritus is, except in a few externals, most happy, would you not, for all that, choose to be Homer rather than
Apollonius? 5. Again: does Eratosthenes in the Erigone (a little poem which is
altogether free from flaw) show himself a greater poet than Archilochus with the rich and disorderly abundance which
follows in his train and with that outburst of the divine spirit within him which it is difficult to bring under the
rules of law? Once more: in lyric poetry would you prefer to be Bacchylides rather than Pindar? And in tragedy to be
Ion of Chios rather than — Sophocles? It is true that Bacchylides and Ion are faultless and entirely elegant writers of
the polished school, while Pindar and Sophocles, although at times they burn everything before them as it were in their
swift career, are often extinguished unaccountably and fail most lamentably. But would anyone in his senses regard all
the compositions of Ion put together as an equivalent for the single play of the Oedipus?

XXXIV

If successful writing were to be estimated by number of merits and not by the true criterion, thus judged Hyperides
would be altogether superior to Demosthenes. For he has a greater variety of accents than Demosthenes and a greater
number of excellences, and like the pentathlete he falls just below the top in every branch. In all the contests he has
to resign the first place to his rivals, while he maintains that place as against all ordinary persons. 2. Now Hyperides not only imitates all the strong points of Demosthenes with the exception of his
composition, but he has embraced in a singular degree the excellences and graces of Lysias as well. For he talks with
simplicity, where it is required, and does not adopt like Demosthenes one unvarying tone in all his utterances. He
possesses the gift of characterisation in a sweet and pleasant form and with a touch of piquancy. There are innumerable
signs of wit in him — the most polished raillery, high-bred ease, supple skill in the contests of irony, jests not
tasteless or rude after the well-known Attic manner but naturally suggested by the subject, clever ridicule, much comic
power, biting satire with well-directed fun, and what may be termed an inimitable charm investing the whole. He is
excellently fitted by nature to excite pity; in narrating a fable he is facile, and with his pliant spirit he is also
most easily turned towards a digression (as for instance in his rather poetical presentation of the story of Leto),
while he has treated his Funeral Oration in the epideictic vein with probably unequalled success. 3. Demosthenes, on the other hand, is not an apt delineator of character, he is not facile, he is
anything but pliant or epideictic, he is comparatively lacking in the entire list of excellences just given. Where he
forces himself to be jocular and pleasant, he does not excite laughter but rather becomes the subject of it, and when
he wishes to approach the region of charm, he is all the farther removed from it. If he had attempted to write the
short speech about Phryne or about Athenogenes, he would have all the more commended Hyperides to our regard. 4. The good points of the latter, however, many though they be, are wanting in elevation; they are
the staid utterances of a sober-hearted man and leave the hearer unmoved, no one feeling terror when he reads
Hyperides. But Demosthenes draws — as from a store — excellences allied to the highest sublimity and perfected to the
utmost, the tone of lofty speech, living passions, copiousness, readiness, speed (where it is legitimate), and that
power and vehemence of his which forbid approach. Having, I say, absorbed bodily within himself these mighty gifts
which we may deem heaven-sent (for it would not be right to term them human), he thus with the noble qualities
which are his own routs all comers even where the qualities he does not possess are concerned, and overpowers with
thunder and with lightning the orators of every age. One could sooner face with unflinching eyes a descending
thunderbolt than meet with steady gaze his bursts of passion in their swift succession.

XXXV

But in the case of Plato and Lysias there is, as I said, a further point of difference. For not only in the degree
of his excellences, but also in their number, Lysias is much inferior to Plato; and at the same time he surpasses him
in his faults still more than he falls below him in his excellences. 2. What fact, then, was
before the eyes of those superhuman writers who, aiming at everything that was highest in composition, contemned an
all-pervading accuracy? This besides many other things, that Nature has appointed us men to be no base nor ignoble
animals; but when she ushers us into life and into the vast universe as into some great assembly, to be as it were
spectators of the mighty whole and the keenest aspirants for honour, forthwith she implants in our souls the
unconquerable love of whatever is elevated and more divine than we. 3. Wherefore not even
the entire universe suffices for the thought and contemplation within the reach of the human mind, but our imaginations
often pass beyond the bounds of space, and if we survey our life on every side and see how much more it everywhere
abounds in what is striking, and great, and beautiful, we shall soon discern the purpose of our birth. 4. This is why, by a sort of natural impulse, we admire not the small streams, useful and pellucid
though they be, but the Nile, the Danube or the Rhine, and still more the Ocean. Nor do we view the tiny flame of our
own kindling (guarded in lasting purity as its light ever is) with greater awe than the celestial fires though they are
often shrouded in darkness; nor do we deem it a greater marvel than the craters of Etna, whose eruptions throw up
stones from its depths and great masses of rock, and at times pour forth rivers of that pure and unmixed subterranean
fire. 5. In all such matters we may say that what is useful or necessary men regard as
commonplace, while they reserve their admiration for that which is astounding.

XXXVI

Now as regards the manifestations of the sublime in literature, in which grandeur is never, as it sometimes is in
nature, found apart from utility and advantage, it is fitting to observe at once that, though writers of this magnitude
are far removed from faultlessness, they none the less all rise above what is mortal; that all other qualities prove
their possessors to be men, but sublimity raises them near the majesty of God; and that while immunity from errors
relieves from censure, it is grandeur that excites admiration. 2. What need to add thereto
that each of these supreme authors often redeems all his failures by a single sublime and happy touch, and (most
important of all) that if one were to pick out and mass together the blunders of Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and all the
rest of the greatest writers, they would be found to be a very small part, nay an infinitesimal fraction, of the
triumphs which those heroes achieve on every hand? This is the reason why the judgment of all posterity — a verdict
which envy itself cannot convict of perversity — has brought and offered those meeds of victory which up to this day it
guards intact and seems likely still to preserve,

Long as earth’s waters shall flow, and her tall trees burgeon and bloom.

3. In reply, however, to the writer who maintains that the faulty Colossus is not
superior to the Spearman of Polycleitus, it is obvious to remark among many other things that in art the utmost
exactitude is admired, grandeur in the works of nature; and that it is by nature that man is a being gifted with
speech. In statues likeness to man is the quality required; in discourse we demand, as I said, that which transcends
the human. 4. Nevertheless — and the counsel about to be given reverts to the beginning of our
memoir — since freedom from failings is for the most part the successful result of art, and excellence (though it may
be unevenly sustained) the result of sublimity, the employment of art is in every way a fitting aid to nature; for it
is the conjunction of the two which tends to ensure perfection.

Such are the decisions to which we have felt bound to come with regard to the questions proposed; but let every man
cherish the view which pleases him best.

XXXVII

CLOSELY related to Metaphors (for we must return to our point) are comparisons and similes,
differing only in this respect . . .

XXXVIII

. . . such Hyperboles as: ‘unless you carry your brains trodden down in your heels’ (On
the Halonnesus 45). It is necessary, therefore, to know where to fix the limit in each case; for an occasional
overshooting of the mark ruins the hyperbole, and such expressions, when strained too much, lose their tension, and
sometimes swing round and produce the contrary effect. 2. Isocrates, for example, fell
into unaccountable puerility owing to the ambition which made him desire to describe everything with a touch of
amplification. The theme of his Panegyric is that Athens surpasses Lacedaemon in benefits conferred upon
Greece, and yet at the very outset of his speech he uses these words: ‘Further, language has such capacity that it is
possible thereby to debase things lofty and invest things small with grandeur, and to express old things in a new way,
and to discourse in ancient fashion about what has newly happened (Panegyricus 8).’ ‘Do you
then, Isocrates,’ it may be asked, ‘mean in that way to interchange the facts of Lacedaemonian and Athenian history?’
For in his eulogy of language he has, we may say, published to his hearers a preamble warning them to distrust
himself.3. Perhaps, then, as we said in dealing with figures generally, those hyperboles are
best in which the very fact that they are hyperboles escapes attention. This happens when, through stress of strong
emotion, they are uttered in connexion with some great crisis, as is done by Thucydides in the case of those who
perished in Sicily. ‘The Syracusans,‘he says, ‘came down to the water’s edge and began the slaughter of those chiefly
who were in the river, and the water at once became polluted, but none the less it was swallowed although muddy and
mixed with blood, and to most it was still worth fighting for (Thucydides, Histories 7.84).’
That a draught of blood and mud should still be worth fighting for, is rendered credible by the intensity of the
emotion at a great crisis. 4. So with the passage in which Herodotus tells of those who
fell at Thermopylae. ‘On this spot,’ he says, ‘the barbarians buried them as they defended themselves with daggers —
those of them who had daggers still left — and with hands and mouths (Herodotus, Histories 7.
225).’ Here you may be inclined to protest against the expressions ‘fight with their very mouths’ against men in
armour, and ‘being buried’ with darts. At the same time the narrative carries conviction; for the event does not seem
to be introduced for the sake of the hyperbole, but the hyperbole to spring naturally from the event.
5. For (as I never cease to say) the deeds and passions which verge on transport are a sufficient
lenitive and remedy for every audacity of speech. This is the reason why the quips of comedy, although they may be
carried to the extreme of absurdity, are plausible because they are so amusing. For instance,

Smaller his field was than a Spartan letter.

For mirth, too, is an emotion, an emotion which has its root in pleasure. 6. Hyperboles are employed
in describing things small as well as great, since exaggeration is the common element in both cases. And, in a sense,
ridicule is an amplification of the paltriness of things.

XXXIX

The fifth of those elements contributing to the sublime which we mentioned, excellent friend, at the beginning,
still remains to be dealt with, namely the arrangement of the words in a certain order. In regard to this, having
already in two treatises sufficiently stated such results as our inquiry could compass, we will add, for the purpose of
our present undertaking, only what is absolutely essential, namely the fact that harmonious arrangement is not only a
natural source of persuasion and pleasure among men but also a wonderful instrument of lofty utterance and of passion.
2. For does not the flute instil certain emotions into its hearers and as it were make them
beside themselves and full of frenzy, and supplying a rhythmical movement constrain the listener to move rhythmically
in accordance therewith and to conform himself to the melody, although he may be utterly ignorant of music? Yes, and
the tones of the harp, although in themselves they signify nothing at all, often cast a wonderful spell, as you know,
over an audience by means of the variations of sounds, by their pulsation against one another, and by their mingling in
concert. 3. And yet these are mere semblances and spurious copies of persuasion, not (as I have
said) genuine activities of human nature. Are we not, then, to hold that composition (being a harmony of that language
which is implanted by nature in man and which appeals not to the hearing only but to the soul itself), since it calls
forth manifold shapes of words, thoughts, deeds, beauty, melody, all of them born at our birth and growing with our
growth, and since by means of the blending and variation of its own tones it seeks to introduce into the minds of those
who are present the emotion which affects the speaker and since it always brings the audience to share in it and by the
building of phrase upon phrase raises a sublime and harmonious structure: are we not, I say, to hold that harmony by
these selfsame means allures us and invariably disposes us to stateliness and dignity and elevation and every emotion
which it contains within itself, gaining absolute mastery over our minds? But it is folly to dispute concerning matters
which are generally admitted, since experience is proof sufficient. 4. An example of a
conception which is usually thought sublime and is really admirable is that which Demosthenes associates with the
decree: ‘This decree caused the danger which then beset the city to pass by just-as a cloud (On the
Crown 188).’ But it owes its happy sound no less to the harmony than to the thought itself. For the thought is
expressed throughout in dactylic rhythms, and these are most noble and productive of sublimity; and therefore it is
that they constitute the heroic, the finest metre that we know. [And the order of the expression hôsper nephos
is exactly right.] For if you derange the words of the sentence and transpose them in whatever way you will, as for
example ‘This decree just-as a cloud caused the danger of the time to pass by’; nay, if you cut off a single syllable
only and say caused to pass by as a cloud,’ you will perceive to what an extent harmony is in unison with sublimity.
For the very words ‘just-as a cloud’ begin with a long rhythm, which consists of four metrical beats; but if one
syllable is cut off and we read ‘as a cloud,’ we immediately maim the sublimity by the abbreviation. Conversely, if you
elongate the word and write ‘caused to pass by just-as-if a cloud,’ it means the same thing, but no longer falls with
the same effect upon the ear, inasmuch as the abrupt grandeur of the passage loses its energy and tension through the
lengthening of the concluding syllables.

XL

Among the chief causes of the sublime in speech, as in the structure of the human body, is the collocation of
members, a single one of which if severed from another possesses in itself nothing remarkable, but all united together
make a full and perfect organism. So the constituents of grandeur, when separated from one another, carry with them
sublimity in distraction this way and that, but when formed into a body by association and when further encircled in a
chain of harmony they become sonorous by their very rotundity; and in periods sublimity is, as it were, a contribution
made by a multitude. 2. We have, however, sufficiently shown that many writers and poets who
possess no natural sublimity and are perhaps even wanting in elevation have nevertheless, although employing for the
most part common and popular words with no striking associations of their own, by merely joining and fitting these
together, secured dignity and distinction and the appearance of freedom from meanness. Instances will be furnished by
Philistus among many others, by Aristophanes in certain passages, by Euripides in most. 3. In
the last-mentioned author, Heracles, after the scene in which he slays his children, uses the words:—

The expression is a most ordinary one, but it has gained elevation through the aptness of the structure of the line.
If you shape the sentence in a different way, you will see this plainly, the fact being that Euripides is a poet in
virtue of his power of composition rather than of his invention. 4. In the passage which describes
Dirce torn away by the bull:—

Whitherso’er he turned

Swift wheeling round, he haled and hurled withal

Dame, rock, oak, intershifted ceaselessly,

the conception itself is a fine one, but it has been rendered more forcible by the fact that the harmony is not
hurried or carried as it were on rollers, but the words act as buttresses for one another and find support in the
pauses, and issue finally in a well-grounded sublimity.

XLI

There is nothing in the sphere of the sublime, that is so lowering as broken and agitated movement of language, such
as is characteristic of pyrrhics and trochees and dichorees, which fall altogether to the level of dance-music. For all
over-rhythmical writing is at once felt to be affected and finical and wholly lacking in passion owing to the monotony
of its superficial polish. 2. And the worst of it all is that, just as petty lays draw their
hearer away from the point and compel his attention to themselves, so also overrhythmical style does not communicate
the feeling of the words but simply the feeling of the rhythm. Sometimes, indeed, the listeners knowing beforehand the
due terminations stamp their feet in time with the speaker, and as in a dance give the right step in anticipation.
3. In like manner those words are destitute of sublimity which lie too close together, and are cut up
into short and tiny syllables, and are held together as if with wooden bolts by sheer inequality and ruggedness.

XLII

FURTHER, excessive concision of expression tends to lower the sublime, since grandeur is marred when
the thought is brought into too narrow a compass. Let this be understood not of proper compression, but of what is
absolutely petty and cut into segments. For concision curtails the sense, but brevity goes straight to the mark. It is
plain that, vice versa, prolixities are frigid, for so is everything that resorts to unseasonable length.

XLIII

Triviality of expression is also apt to disfigure sublimity. In Herodotus, for example, the tempest is described
with marvellous effect in all its details, but the passage surely contains some words below the dignity of the subject.
The following may serve as an instance — ‘when the sea seethed (Histories VII. 188).’ The word
‘seethed’ detracts greatly from the sublimity because it is an ill-sounding one. Further, ‘the wind,’ he says, ‘grew
fagged,’ and those who clung to the spars met ‘an unpleasant end’ (Histories VII. 191) and
(VIII.13). The expression ‘grew fagged’ is lacking in dignity, being vulgar; and the word
‘unpleasant’ is inappropriate to so great a disaster. 2. Similarly, when Theopompus had
dressed out in marvellous fashion the descent of the Persian king upon Egypt, he spoilt the whole by some petty words.
‘For which of the cities (he says) or which of the tribes in Asia did not send envoys to the Great King? Which of the
products of the earth or of the achievements of art was not, in all its beauty or preciousness, brought as an offering
to his presence? Consider the multitude of costly coverlets and mantles, in purple or white or embroidery; the
multitude of pavilions of gold furnished with all things useful; the multitude, too, of tapestries and costly couches.
Further, gold and silver plate richly wrought, and goblets and mixing-bowls, some of which you might have seen set with
precious stones, and others finished with care and at great price. In addition to all this, countless myriads of Greek
and barbaric weapons, and beasts of burden beyond all reckoning and victims fattened for slaughter, and many bushels of
condiments, and many bags and sacks and sheets of papyrus and all other useful things, and an equal number of pieces of
salted flesh from all manner of victims, so that the piles of them were so great that those who were approaching from a
distance took them to be hills and eminences confronting them.’ 3. He runs off from the
more elevated to the more lowly, whereas he should, on the contrary, have risen higher and higher. With his wonderful
description of the whole outfit he mixes bags and condiments and sacks, and conveys the impression of a confectioner’s
shop! For just as if, in the case of those very adornments, between the golden vessels and the jewelled mixing-bowls
and the silver plate and the pavilions of pure gold and the goblets, a man were to bring and set in the midst paltry
bags and sacks, the proceeding would have been offensive to the eye, so do such words when introduced out of season
constitute deformities and as it were blots on the diction. 4. He might have described the
scene in massive images just as he says that hills blocked their way, and with regard to the preparations generally
have spoken of ‘waggons and camels and the multitude of beasts of burden carrying everything that ministers to the
luxury and enjoyment of the table,’ or have used some such expression as ‘piles of all manner of grain and things which
conduce preeminently to good cookery and comfort of body,’ or if he must necessarily put it in so uncompromising a way,
he might have said that ‘all the dainties of cooks and caterers were there.’ 5. In lofty
passages we ought not to descend to sordid and contemptible language unless constrained by some overpowering necessity,
but it is fitting that we should use words worthy of the subject and imitate nature the artificer of man, for she has
not placed in full view our grosser parts or the means of purging our frame, but has hidden them away as far as was
possible, and as Xenophon says has put their channels in the remotest background, so as not to sully the beauty of the
entire creature. 6. But enough; there is no need to enumerate, one by one, the things which
produce triviality. For since we have previously indicated those qualities which render style noble and lofty, it is
evident that their opposites will for the most part make it low and base.

XLIV

It remains, however (as I will not hesitate to add, in recognition of your love of knowledge) to clear up, my dear
Terentianus, a question which a certain philosopher has recently mooted. ‘I wonder,’ he says, ‘as no doubt do many
others, how it happens that in our time there are men who have the gift of persuasion to the utmost extent, and are
well fitted for public life, and are keen and ready, and particularly rich in all the charms of language, yet there no
longer arise really lofty and transcendent natures unless quite exceptionally. So great and world-wide a dearth of high
utterance attends our age.’ 2. ‘Can it be,’ he continued, ‘that we are to accept the trite
explanation that democracy is the kind nursing-mother of genius, and that literary power may be said to share its rise
and fall with democracy and democracy alone? For freedom, it is said, has power to feed the imaginations of the
lofty-minded and inspire hope, and where it prevails there spreads abroad the eagerness of mutual rivalry and the
emulous pursuit of the foremost place. 3. Moreover, owing to the prizes which are open to
all under popular government, the mental excellences of the orator are continually exercised and sharpened, and as it
were rubbed bright, and shine forth (as it is natural they should) with all the freedom which inspires the doings of
the state. To-day,’ he went on, ‘we seem in our boyhood to learn the lessons of a righteous servitude, being all but
enswathed in its customs and observances, when our thoughts are yet young and tender, and never tasting the fairest and
most productive source of eloquence (by which,’ he added, ‘I mean freedom), so that we emerge in no other guise than
that of sublime flatterers.’ 4. This is the reason, he maintained, why no slave ever becomes
an orator, although all other faculties may belong to menials. In the slave there immediately burst out signs of
fettered liberty of speech, of the dungeon as it were, of a man habituated to buffetings. 5. ‘For the day of slavery,’ as Homer has it, ‘takes away half our manhood (Odyssey
XVII. 322).’ ‘Just as,’ he proceeded, ‘the cages (if what I hear is true) in which are kept the Pygmies,
commonly called nani, not only hinder the growth of the creatures confined within them, but actually attenuate
them through the bonds which beset their bodies, so one has aptly termed all servitude (though it be most righteous)
the cage of the soul and a public prison-house.’ 6. I answered him thus: ‘It is easy, my
good sir, and characteristic of human nature, to find fault with the age in which one lives. But consider whether it
may not be true that it is not the world’s peace that ruins great natures, but far rather this war illimitable which
holds our desires in its grasp, aye, and further still those passions which occupy as with troops our present age and
utterly harry and plunder it. For the love of money (a disease from which we all now suffer sorely) and the love of
pleasure make us their thralls, or rather, as one may say, drown us body and soul in the depths, the love of riches
being a malady which makes men petty, and the love of pleasure one which makes them most ignoble. 7. On reflexion I cannot discover how it is possible for us, if we value boundless wealth so highly,
or (to speak more truly) deify it, to avoid allowing the entrance into our souls of the evils which are inseparable
from it. For vast and unchecked wealth is accompanied, in close conjunction and step for step as they say, by
extravagance, and as soon as the former opens the gates of cities and houses, the latter immediately enters and abides.
And when time has passed the pair build nests in the lives of men, as the wise say, and quickly give themselves to the
rearing of offspring, and breed ostentation, and vanity, and luxury, no spurious progeny of theirs, but only too
legitimate. If these children of wealth are permitted to come to maturity, straightway they beget in the soul
inexorable masters — insolence, and lawlessness, and shamelessness. 8. This must necessarily
happen, and men will no longer lift up their eyes or have any further regard for fame, but the ruin of such lives will
gradually reach its complete consummation and sublimities of soul fade and wither away and become contemptible, when
men are lost in admiration of their own mortal parts and omit to exalt that which is immortal. 9.
For a man who has once accepted a bribe for a judicial decision cannot be an unbiassed and upright judge of what is
just and honourable (since to the man who is venal his own interests must seem honourable and just), and the same is
true where the entire life of each of us is ordered by bribes, and huntings after the death of others, and the laying
of ambushes for legacies, while gain from any and every source we purchase — each one of us — at the price of life
itself, being the slaves of pleasure. In an age which is ravaged by plagues so sore, is it possible for us to imagine
that there is still left an unbiassed and incorruptible judge of works that are great and likely to reach posterity, or
is it not rather the case that all are influenced in their decisions by the passion for gain? 10. Nay, it is perhaps better for men like ourselves to be ruled than to be free, since our
appetites, if let loose without restraint upon our neighbours like beasts from a cage, would set the world on fire with
deeds of evil. 11. Summing up, I maintained that among the banes of the natures which our
age produces must be reckoned that half-heartedness in which the life of all of us with few exceptions is passed, for
we do not labour or exert ourselves except for the sake of praise and pleasure, never for those solid benefits which
are a worthy object of our own efforts and the respect of others. 12. But “tis best to
leave these riddles unresolved’ (Euripides, Electra 379), and to proceed to what next presents
itself, namely the subject of the Passions, about which I previously undertook to write in a separate treatise. These
form, as it seems to me, a material part of discourse generally and of the Sublime itself.

This web edition published by:

eBooks@Adelaide
The University of Adelaide Library
University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005